Extending Our Stay In Venice

In October of this upcoming year, Veronica and I will be flying into Venice Italy where we will be boarding the NCL Jade for a 14 day cruise that will take in ports in Italy, Sicily, the Greek Isles, Slovenia and Croatia.
We decided that since we will already be paying a steep price for the airline tickets into Venice and then out of Rome for our return flight home, that we would like to extend our vacation for a couple of days. This way we would have a little more time to be spent in Venice itself.
I booked us a room at the Hotel Papadopli Venezia for 2 nights prior to our cruise starting.
I got us a Luxury King room that overlooks the Tolentini Canal.
We will hopefully be arriving into Venice early and drop our luggage off at the hotel and then go out and about in the city of Venice.
I am planning on making some type of arrangements for our 2nd day in Venice, to go visit the islands of Murano, Burano and Torcello.
Of course I will also need to set up a gondola ride for Veronica and I, which will include a serenade from the gondolier.
We will also have 1 other day in Venice, when our ship returns to Venice to drop of those passengers that did not book the back to back cruises that make up the 14 day itinerary. This return will be at the end of the first week of our 2 week cruise.
We should be able to get off of the ship early and head directly into Venice from the cruise ship terminal.
I still have a lot of prep work to get done for this next upcoming adventure but by getting the hotel reservations done, it feels like it is really going to happen for us.
I am also doing some preliminary work for our next adventure that will be happening in 2014.
That adventure will be one where we will be going and doing things more independently compared to a cruise.
We are looking at flying into Edinburgh...where Veronica and I had way too little time to really take in a lot of what that city has to offer during our last cruise and then from Edinburgh we would be going into London for a few days and then taking a train into Paris, where we would spend several days and then return home from there.
This itinerary will be a big and really exciting one for us.